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How Two Common Meds Became One $455 Million Specialty Pill
Posted: 10-11-2017 08:35 PM
by Riddick
Vimovo is a combination of two marked-up generic, over-the-counter, medicines: naproxen, also known by the brand Aleve, and esomeprazole magnesium, also known as Nexium. The Aleve handles your pain and the Nexium helps with the upset stomach that’s sometimes caused by the pain reliever.
The key selling point of this new, expensive “convenience drug”? It’s easier to take one pill than two. And it’s yet another reason Americans pay too much for health care.
FULL STORY
Re: How Two Common Meds Became One $455 Million Specialty Pill
Posted: 10-12-2017 04:40 AM
by kbot
From the article:
"This year I have been documenting the kind of waste in the health care system that’s not typically tracked. Americans pay more for health care than anyone else in the world, and experts estimate that the U.S. system wastes hundreds of billions of dollars a year. In recent months I’ve looked at what hospitals throw away and how nursing homes flush or toss out hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of usable medicine every year. We all pay for this waste, through lower wages and higher premiums, deductibles and out-of-pocket costs. There doesn’t seem to be an end in sight — I just got a notice that my premiums may be increasing by another 12 percent next year."
There is undoubtedly waste in healthcare. What the author leaves out of the article is that since 2007, reimbursements have dropped each and every year thanks to the Deficit Reduction Act, and will continue to do so, thanks to Medicare rules. Let me give you an example pf "waste". Yesterday I signed-off on a million dollars worth of invoices in order to complete the purchase and installation of a new CT scanner that has as one component, dose-reduction technologies designed specifically to meet new Medicare-imposed regulations. If those software programs are nt part of the system, Medicare pays less. If the doctor reading the study does not use certain language in their report documenting lower dose, we get paid less. The amount of personnel necessary to track these rules is insane - they're fulltime jobs.
Also, the author doesn't mention higher lawsuits in this county compared to other countries - another reason why costs are so high here.